"Escape From New York" - stupid film, but.... Classic or Dud?

and speaking of walter hill, would watch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_to_the_Head

banning alex in nyc in retrospect too for being such a dope.

Why don't you go gargle with a bag of your own filth?

ALEX!

If an eyepatch and camo pants is wrong, I don't want it to be right.

this is the weakest of the Carpenter/Russell troika but it is still great. Carpenter had an amazing 15 year run - Josh in Chicago otm about that. Even stuff like the Fog and They Live are loads of fun.

oof i should have known better than to summon the grouch.

lol

this is kind've the second worst thread title ever

http://countycrestpallets.com/images/netco-pbx-callback-essex.png

watching this now - so many plot elements lifted from neuromancer!

oh wait according to wiki it's the other way around

I WAS ABOUT TO SAY

gibson has acknowledged the film's influence iirc

this thread title fucking infuriates me btw

agreed. there is nothing stupid about this film that the film itself isn't aware of.

the other thread only has like 5 posts :(

revolver with a scope + unlimited bullets has got to be one of the best movie weapons ever

you know what is surprisingly entertaining and competently written? the novelization of this movie.

"this is the weakest of the Carpenter/Russell troika but it is still great."

otm

really enjoy the pieced-together open-endedness of this. fits the post apocalyptic crisis mood/premise far better than a tight, snappy plot.

Kurt slays in this and I do mean fuiud

agreed

Here is a thing that I meant to post last month & forgot

Not sure if it means anything but it's an interesting piece of esoterica

http://www.avclub.com/article/shot-shot-symmetry-escape-new-york-and-escape-l-225525

I'm not sure I'd call it weak - that is, there's nothing I wish was better - but it's definitely the most classically b-movie of the Kurt/Carpenter bunch.

xpost Plausible that Escape from LA was done as a passive-aggressive cash grab. Doesnt make it any better though...and pity the fool
who pored over it for hours but, bravo
I guess? idk

Ugh, I'm not sure I saw "Escape from LA" a second time after an advance preview I caught. Total bummer, and I'm not sure recycling some specific shots (and more than recycling the entire first film) counts as "symmetry" so much as laziness. All I really remember, though, is being distracted by the presence of the actress who used to be in "My So-Called Life."

I love this. Tough to pick a russell role between snake/ macready/ jack burton, three amazing roles. Also showing amazing range.

I paid theater money to see Escape from LA, Vampires, and Spiders from Mars or whatever that nonsense was called

Hours of my life, gone

ghosts of mars is spectaaaacularly bad. i mean like if carpenter hadn't done a BUNCH of schlock it would have to be a parody. highlight is when a character does a narrated flashback of all the scenes we just saw, to bring another character up to speed. "so then i went down the hallway..."

also when the one alien ghost is screaming on the hill like BAAGAAWUGGALAAAAAA, that was great. he sounds like Strong Mad.

whereas, like, 'prince of darkness' is just ... boring.

so boring

Prince of Darkness is not boring! I'll watch that movie all day. Maybe it loses some steam in the overly-long opening sequence, maybe Jameson Parker has some offputting conversational gambits... Once they finally go to the church lock-in, it's great. Wish Dennis Dun had been in more movies.

Otoh, I saw that Vampires was on Amazon Prime streaming the other day and decided to give it a go. Made it 15 minutes in maybe? I just found myself second-guessing every single move any character made.

I love how boring Prince of Darkness is. I love that budget/or lack of narrative imagination determined that it's like the most apocalyptic scenario possible played out in the most modest of situations. Like, a handful of folks padding around an old church while the fate of the world teeters on the brink. Talk about the banality of evil.

Prince of Darkness is awesome, maybe my favorite Carpenter after The Thing.

Think I've watched this Escape from NY about 20x times (uk tip: catch repeats on itv4 often). Plot is hammy - sophistication isn't what I was expecting. That's fine.

Soundtrack is superb. Dean Stanton is the best of supporting cast; Pleasance follows close by. Disagree on Russell, I suppose you could mistake the lack of expression for a 'couldn't be bothered' but fits the Snake tough-street style. Only relative flaw is there wasn't enough of him and van Cleef. Would see a sequel where they were a team (as van Cleef was offering by the end). Instead we got Escape from LA.

Saw the last hour of this after coming back home last Fri - renewed my appreciation of the tape switch.

I remember being incredulous about Prince of Darkness until it got to the scene where Alice Cooper kills the nerd guy from Riptide with half a bicycle, then I realized it could do anything it wanted. it's like the pacing of the fight scene in They Live applied to an entire movie.

Prince of Darkness isn't peak material but it's still v good and pretty batshit imo

zzzzzz

man between this thread title and the aliens one

i wish i could conjure back up the particular way i was annoyed and bored by prince of darkness, cause i'm remembering these bits and pieces that were good. it just felt like this ridiculously large cast all pacing around independently of each other. like we're still meeting new people an hour into the movie, and nobody seems really aware of anything else that's going on. there's this sense of non-urgency or disconnectedness, people having weird my-dinner-with-andre conversations about the anti-god equation off in a separate movie from the people trying to escape the green slime. it would feel dreamlike if it felt like it was on purpose, i guess.

and then there's like a twenty-four hour montage, sun setting, sun rising, as dennis dun (IIRC) slowly tries to break through a wall with a chair or a spoon or something, and in the last ten minutes he tries to get the people on the other side to actually help? the creepy computer was cool i guess.

vampires is the carp nadir afaic. james woods is one of those guys who is exceptional in the right role and this wasn't one of them.

what I most remember abt that movie oddly is that is was one of gregory sierra's last screen roles before his apparent retirement. I love when old school dudes show up, but this was no 'deep cover' kinda role for him.

I saw that in the theater and man so baaaaaad. apart from the guy who gets sliced in half. that was funny.

According to the original book's author John Steakley, the film contained much of his dialogue and none of his plot.

thing I remember about Vampires was just lots of misogyny, like every other vampire was a woman who was being tortured or burst into flames

also sealed my lifelong distaste for James Woods

I actually called Carpenter on that at the press junket (way back when), and iirc his and everyone's defense was they're not women, they're vampires! I guess he had a point, but still ... not biting.

"not biting"

baloney

why dress them in gendered clothing if their gender is irrelevant, why not make them more animalistic etc etc

it was a choice & a bad one, and that's a cowardly answer "but but theyre just vampires"

As a kid I was a bit obsessed with Frank Doubleday as Romero, he stole every scene. it took me years to find out his actual name and the name of the character, he's also the guy that shoots the kid in Assault On Precinct 13

http://i61.tinypic.com/15s7tia.png

Holy shit. I'd never made that connection before! I can't stand that scene though, even though it's what sets everything in motion.

don't order the vanilla, kid!

This is my favorite carpenter OST right now. So krautfully delightful.

I liked but was vexed by PoD when I watched it w couple of years ago. I wanna see it again. I like jarringly quiescent genre stories. I'm a huge fan of In The Mouth Of Madness (not that it's quiescent but it's late carpenter that no one mentioned)